Has anyone solved the issue of License overages?

I'm a bit late to all the new updates...Is there any solution to the problem of license overages? It's nice that we can work over in case of emergency, but I'd like a way to deny licenses if we've hit our limit for everyday use. Is there anything that can do that?

You can identify who has write-access to a file (in properly configured networks) when you open a file with MicroStation. Beyond that, though, content management is really not what desktop applications are for... that is specifically why server-based applications like ProjectWise Integration Server exist.

I don't need to know who's in which file. That's never a problem. I need to know who else is running Geopak, or LEAP or MicroStation and who needs to get out of it so we don't overuse our licenses.

People tend to assume that, because software is installed on their station, that they have a license for it and can get into it any time they want for as long as they want. This leads to a couple of engineers getting in to doodle something up or take quantities, then just minimizing Microstation instead of closing out. Then our drafting tech gets in to do some work, and we're over license. Or the Survey guy is popping in and out of Geopak to get small bits of information all day while I'm doing road design. Now we're over license. I don't think it's that we need MORE licenses. We need people to use them smarter. Without some sort of license overuse warning, they are not, by nature, going to think about it. I tell people to pay attention and check with other people, and they do for a few days...then everyone goes back to doing things as they always do.

Is there any way to access license management through VBA? Has anyone heard of a VBA that could read licenses used and issue a warning dialog?

With VBA there are OnDesignFileOpened and OnDesignFileClosed commands. You could read & write to a shared text file. That way you could manually count how many applications are open. I don't use any add-on packages myself, so I don't know how vba could identify Geopak or those applications.

--Robert

Addendum:I guess with the next post, the text file would have to have a machine name and a time stamp. If the day/hour of the time stamp is in the current hour, then you count that as a usage. If the hour is is from the past, you could delete that entry.

With VBA there are OnDesignFileOpened and OnDesignFileClosed commands. You could read & write to a shared text file. That way you could manually count how many applications are open. I don't use any add-on packages myself, so I don't know how vba could identify Geopak or those applications.

--Robert

Addendum:I guess with the next post, the text file would have to have a machine name and a time stamp. If the day/hour of the time stamp is in the current hour, then you count that as a usage. If the hour is is from the past, you could delete that entry.